Scandal of the children denied homes with adoptive parents

By Sheila Lawlor

12:01AM GMT 06 Nov 2002

The crisis in adoption has nothing to do with the controversy about granting gay couples the right to adopt. There is a scandal that will not be solved by the Adoption Bill that has been debated in Parliament, with or without its provisions for gay couples. The heart of this scandal is that thousands of married couples who are anxious to adopt are not allowed to, and that thousands of children therefore stay in unsatisfactory care.

The Bill is meant to make adoption quicker, transparent and more streamlined. But it does not tackle the real obstacle - the entrenched powers of the local authority and its social service departments, filled by officials for whom both ordinary family life and adoption itself conflict with the values on which their own interests rest.

First, take the children for whom the local authorities or councils are responsible, once the decision is made to take them into care. Of the 90,000 or so children in care in a given period, about 70 per cent return home within a year. Those who remain in care are not adopted but fostered out, often for short periods, with different families. Foster parents are paid to care for the child and the council remains responsible. Often a child has three or more different foster families in a year. Only about half (46 per cent) spend as long as two years with the same foster parents.

The children therefore go from pillar to post, unable to settle down, and are less and less likely to be adopted. We hear of their longing for stability and for adoption where, as one child put it, there would be someone to "call Mum and Dad". That, however, may never be. According to the figures, after 18 months of care, a child is likely to remain in care for four years, and probably until he leaves the care system at 17 or 18.

The evidence is that local councils, far from encouraging adoption, have put insurmountable obstacles in the way of adoptive parents, many of whom are stable, married couples. It is officially admitted that prospective adopters have been rejected because they are the wrong race or mix, the wrong age or because they smoke. But there is another less obvious, but probably greater hurdle: the "positive" vetting of prospective parents by officials - a vetting which most decent parents would probably fail.

This vetting puts adoptive parents through the "Form F" procedure. The social worker on the "case" is given open access for visits to the family so as to "vet" it, and may put the most personal and intrusive questions. The family is entitled to see neither the detailed private notes for the case nor the private recommendations of the social worker during the course of the long inquiry - which often lasts over a year, with home visits and interviews and references. Rather, the family may be told generally the official position and shown the open (but limited) report. The couple will not usually be present at the adjudication and has no way of directly answering any "charge" against them or of countering false information - which will not have been revealed to them - or the prejudices of the social workers.

In theory, such adoptive parents may make their own representations or may appeal to different bodies and an ombudsman but the reality is a kangaroo court system - ostensible fairness and hidden prejudice. The Adoption Bill proposes a right of appeal but this already exists. There is nothing to suggest the system will be other than stacked in favour of the social service departments whose control and influence will be enhanced.

Rejected adopters will hardly be encouraged by the prospect of appealing and going through a new set of hoops. Already, they will have spent considerable sums in charges levied by the council for vetting and "Form F" and most likely, too, for the obligatory medical check. They will also have lost earnings because of the leaves of absence they are so often obliged to take from work to be available for the "knock on the door" at the whim of a social worker.

What is behind this dismal tale? The present social service departments were created as a single service in the 1970s following the Seebohm Report. A new council bureaucracy was created, each with a single director, unified training schemes and a "generic social work" role covering every part of society, young and old. The new departments took over different functions from the Home Office, health ministry and the different council committees. They were able to lobby for public money and to influence and rival the powerful education departments.

From the start there was a conflict of ideology in these departments. Should they support families or supplant them and use their powers to promote an alternative society, since, in the eyes of many social workers, families are seen as a source of oppression? Such anti-family ideology is at the root of many of the notorious cases of social work. Children were in some cases confiscated from their families and taken into care - as in Cleveland, where the actions of the social workers were eventually condemned by the courts. At the same time, defenceless children known to be at serious risk were left in the care of unstable, negligent and ultimately evil adults, very often where only one was a natural parent.

The Adoption Bill might have been intended to help, but instead it plays into the hands of those who have persistently undermined the prospects of adoption for children in care. Social workers will have more funds, more training and ultimately more power. Little will be done for the children, whose time runs out as adoptive parents go through endless appeals and as local authorities, despite targets and the aim of a quicker system, fail to place children for adoption.

The real solution is to take adoption and the care of children out of the hands of the state and to follow the successful systems found in America and on the Continent, where extended families, intending adopters, natural parents, charities and voluntary bodies work together within a framework of law to assure the best future for the children. But the Government, with its irrelevant proposal for gay couples to adopt, has created a distraction - and children and families are the losers.